Android takes 48% of Q2 smartphone market

LONDON – The global smartphone market was 107.7 million units in 2Q11, an increase of 73 percent compared with 2Q10, according to market research firm Canalys Ltd.

Of the 56 countries Canalys tracks around the world, Android led in 35 of them and achieved a global market share of 48 percent. Asia Pacific (APAC) remained the largest regional market, with 39.8 million units shipping there, compared with 35.0 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and 32.9 million in the Americas, Canalys said.

Android became the leading smartphone platform in 4Q10 and its shipment were up in the second quarter by 379 percent compared with the same quarter a year before to 51.9 million units. Leading Android smartphone vendors include: Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei.

With shipments of 20.3 million and a market share of 19% in Q2, iPhones and iOS overtook Nokia’s Symbian platform during the quarter to take second place worldwide. In doing so, Apple displaced Nokia as the world’s leading smartphone vendor. Samsung also moved ahead of Nokia, Canalys reckons.

Why does this article not spell out the market share for windows, RIM and apple? The restated their point a few times and could have actually been informative in the same amount of time.
I find these articles waste my time because they are poorly written and not informative. I will no longer read them.

Fostering an open-source model of development platform is not something Microsoft has ever successfully embraced. Apple obviously doesn't either but their high-value perception sells to the customer.
The sorry loser in all of this is really Nokia which at one time had a huge marketshare of handhelds. Some one there was asleep at the wheel of innovations!
MP Divakar

The reaction against having Microsoft on your smart phone is more visceral than the reaction against having an Apple OS on your phone.
We got a taste of compact hand-held Windows OS during the PDA era and it was clunky and buggy.
Probably the only reason Apple has not gobbled up much more market share is for the same reason that "ye olde" Microsoft IBM PC ate Apples lunch, limited hardware options with a closed, may I say "snooty" architecture.
If they open it up, the sky is the limit.

I am not sure I understand why you consider this bad.
The tiering is surely only good. It gives vendors the chance to provide offerings that are suited to a broad spectrum of consumers from those prepared to pay top dollar for fancy multi-core phones. It also gives people the ability to ship lesser phones that can still do email and a bit of browsing without breaking the bank.
This must sure be vastly ahead of the Microsoft model of locking down phone specs which forces commoditising of the platform and prevents vendrs serving the market effectively.

It is interesting to reflect back on the original announcements of the iphone. At the time Jobs showed that even if the iphone got a 1% market share of phones it would be a huge winner for the company. They far exceeded that.
And of course at the same time Ballmer mocked the iphone and predicted its doom. The reality is that MS has been the biggest disappointment in this sector.

Right now, the most capable best spec'd phones are Android based. And right now, you can still buy very low tier Android phones that do not perform particularly well... That's both good and bad. It'd be interesting to see what the fraction of the 48% market share are "iphone comparable" Androids. My guess is about 1/2.